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Raindrop looks interesting, but they're also going to allow up to 200 random interneteers to put a short story in the game, as a readable book (at the $125 reward level). How can they hope to keep a consistent tone? I can live with some backer rewards including in-game items; I can live with really expensive rewards being allowed to influence a something (as in, backer requests something, designer interprets that in such a way as to fit in with the rest of the game). But when they say "Write your own short story and immortalize yourself by having it as [an] in-game readable book" it worries me.

They can fix that with editing, but that should be in the description. Also, not every backer at that level is choosing story, several probably are doing portraits.

It's been a while since I pledged to a Kickstarter but Eden Star has got my pledge. I'd really like to see them succeed, although at this point it seems unlikely. Let's see what happens in those 38 days.

$1.1 million seems A LOT to me, especially cause I don't know how well people remember them. Really hope it gets funded though. It was worth it for me to back the project just for getting to see that Cyan intro video play again. Nostalgia!

Even without accreditation, people found me on my Wikimedia page. I would get the occasional thanks for my photos, like the one of the Vectrex system (an obscure flop). I began to realize this was less about the quality of my work and more about saving and sharing the history of gaming. It turns out that my videogame gallery is a valuable resource of gaming information: one central location, easily found through a web search, with consistent and complementary high-quality images available to all for free.

Cornerstone has a demo, so you should try it. It's pretty fun, and far more Windwaker than Dark souls. Still, there are multiple ways around a challenge.

Knite & The Ghost Lights were handing out the rewards, which is probably unwise, but then I realized they were only sending a small sketch to about 30 people, so it's not going to break them. Full disclosure, I backed Knite.

Dropsy is back, for the third time. Shame on RPS for featuring this. Nathan was into the game when he was doing the katchup, but a member of the press needs to watch out for your readers' interests not their own. This creator already has shown absolutely no ability to deliver or even deliver a reasonable estimate of what it takes to make a game.

Onto the coolest new games:Bolt Riley - A reggae themed adventure game with some very nice art. From the creators of Quest for Glory.Confederate Express: A game where you're the delivery boy after a zombie apocalypse. The top down zombie shooter genre might be tired, but their art isn't. Some really nice lo-fi animations.Chain Gang Chase: A seven player game with local play about escaping a prison. It looks like they nailed the fundamentals even if it has no art at this point.Nectar: Bee careful as you gather nectar for your colony. The game has the possibility to be way cooler than what might be the shittiest intro I've ever seen.Night In The Woods - The Suburbs the game. Looks really freaking cool. The designer of Canabalt will make a roguelike that you can play inside the game as the next stretchgoal.

There's five or so more new ones on first page. All in all a good week. I have noticed that a lot of projects have started including Unity's prebuilt water in their demo because they think it looks impressive, when it normally looks out of place compared with everything else that's in the game.

I think Hyperlight Drifter, Night in the Woods, and Confederate Express pitch videos are visible signs of a change undergoing kickstarter. They're well produced, artistic, and show the considerable skill of the creators. Basically, while new ideas (like sim hero and scale) are getting funded, there's a lot of competition now and most creators are putting significant effort into the game before pitching. I think this is probably a good thing, but it's an interesting sign of maturation.

It won't stop very famous devs from saying "pay me to make what I want to make," but normally they're famous for a reason.

Night in the Woods released a really interesting update saying they're not doing any stretchgoals:

So here’s what’s happening: We’re not doing any more stretch goals, at least not for the time being. From here on out, funds will go to making the development more stable and secure financially, and enabling us to do cool things for you guys as they come up. It’ll go to making sure Scott doesn't have to go part-time on development for a few weeks while he does some contract work to make ends meet during the next year and a half. It’ll go to enabling us to bring in super great artists to help do some rad guest NITW comics and animated shorts we’ll release throughout development. It’ll go to interesting things we want to do with the in-game music, or voices, or other things that we’d like to try. It’ll enable us to bring in some help if we need it. It’ll go to an emergency fund in case our computers explode because they’re too full of GAME. It’ll go to helping us maybe go to a con or two next year to meet some of you. It’ll buy Alec at least one pizza he doesn't have to share with the 37 people he lives with. A pizza all his own.

I think that's a pretty good decision (even if I almost certainly won't back it now). I think stretchgoals could potentially be good for something like Project Eternity. The more money they get, the more they can expand the world. The more they can expand the world, the more valuable the franchise, and the more content they have for the next game and expansions. We'll see if it works out that way. Also, adding people on a project is a far more work if you've only done two-man indie collaborations. Or you end up with really stupid goals like an SNES cart for Hyperlight Drifter.

So, I think the data is still out on stretchgoals in general (Shadowrun certainly didn't have enough money for its promises), but I think it was pretty clearly the right decision in this case.

I don't think there's a generically right or wrong way to go about stretch goals. It's dependent on the project and there are projects that have done them that shouldn't have but I'd wager there are few that have skipped stretch goals that will be the worse off for it. So I guess I'd say "be careful when deciding whether or not to have stretch goals for your project," but beyond that I don't think there's much that data can tell us.

From projects I've been watching, successful and otherwise, I think stretch goals work best the more of the following are true:

1) You've blasted through your goal near the very beginning of the campaign

2) You have a clear plan for where you would take the project if you had more money (as in, you already planned the budget and everything before the Kickstarter) but ultimately set it aside because you didn't think the Kickstarter could go that high.

3) You have a community oriented design and the fans really want something that could probably be accomplished yet could not quite be safely promised within the current project's scope.

4) Your project is mostly finished and Kickstarter is helping you the final stretch of the way--editing, manufacturing, printing and shipping a board game for example with all major design accomplished.

5) The things you want to do in the stretch goals have known, stable costs.

6) You are extremely experienced in producing the kinds of content promised in stretch goals. Crucially, you have a deep understanding of how much time and personnel is required.

There are any number of other reasons to have stretch goals even if none of those things are true. But without a few of those under your belt, you're leaving a lot to chance.

Last edited by gwathdring; 29-10-2013 at 10:51 PM.

I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardustís Music Sounds Better With You. Thereís lots of fog. --tomeoftom

Lord of Xulima just launched a kickstarter, which is strange, because their indiegogo campaign was successful. I get the impression that they're doing it to reach stretchgoals that they wanted to implement, but did not get the funding from indiegogo to do so. It's still pretty fishy for a successful project to relaunch so soon; they could be after PR as much as money.

I was grappling with grammar for that one. I read it already, but I don't like how close the two are together. I would be much more comfortable with them taking the money, doing what they said they were going to do, and the kickstarting an expansion pack.

Weekly update time. A lot of games were cleared off, most of them successful. Quite a few strong new games. A lot of shitty zombie games, which is normal, but I think there were about ten of them this week.

My favorite new games (there's more on the first page):Apexicon - Bookworm adventures with even more rpg mechanics! Character classes (like idiomancer and plagiarist), stronghold rebuilding, and quests!Ascendant - A 2.5d Central American inspired roguelike-brawler. Looks very cool.Colossal Kaiju Combat - Essentially a redo of Primal Rage. A tournament fighter where you play as giant monsters.Elliot Quest - An 8-bit game that's a "spiritual successor" to Zelda 2. They have quite a bit of work done already.Girl and the Robot is a game that wears its influences on its sleeve, luckily those influences are Zelda and Ico.Paradise Lost: First Contact - A neat looking game where you play as an alien escaping a government facility. Looks like a 2D version of the alien missions in AVP.

Everything else:
In stretchgoal news, Confederate Express just reached a Boundless World Map. They have some very cool stretchgoals coming up ahead, including playable mechs, zombie characters, and destructible environment. Faeria has a very cool stretchgoal, where players can submit their own cards and everyone votes on them. At the end of the month, the winner is chosen, and then drawn in the game.

Europa 2022 didn't reach funding. The ambitious Eden Star cancelled its campaign. Lords of Discord has completely stalled with seven days left, which is sad because they had so much done already. Raindrop has completely stalled. Undead Overlord failed.

Night in the Woods has started doing backers only updates, if they do two in a row I think it's a fair sign that they've defacto ended their campaign. Pulsar ended well over its goal. City of Titans is ending on Monday, their current stretchgoals are more hero powers, and they just reached functional character wings. Rebuild ended successfully, with a weather/season cycle added. Spark Rising was successful, adding vanity pets for some reason. Universum War succeeded.

Research project on crowdfunding of video games

Greetings,
I am Norbert Steigenberger, Researcher at the University of Cologne. Currently I conduct a research project studying success and failure of crowdfunding of video games. Part of this research is a questionnaire addressed at active or previous backers of Kickstarter projects. The main goal is to get a better understanding of backing decisions. I guess that this research might be interesting for the RPS community. The project has a purely academic background and receives no financial support by any outside sources. The results will be made publicly available upon project completion, if you complete the questionnaire you have the change to provide a valid email address to which I will email the results. The questionnaire can be found here:http://www.unipark.de/uc/videogames/
Please contact me if you have any questions regarding this research.
Appreciating your support, best regards
Norbert Steigenberger